Traffic to top tech publications has plummeted since 2024, new analysis shows
Organic search traffic to some of the internet’s most-read tech publications has dropped by 58% since 2024, according to a new analysis from the SEO and GEO marketing firm Growtika.
The report pulled U.S. organic traffic estimates using Ahrefs for ten major English-language tech publications, including Wired, CNET, Mashable, The Verge, and PC Mag. Growtika then compared each publication’s peak traffic month in 2024 to January 2026. The publications had a combined peak traffic of 112 million in 2024. In January, those same publications only saw 47 million organic visits, a drop of 65 million.
Across the ten publications, The Verge saw the third steepest decline, falling from over 5.3 million organic visits in February 2024 to just 790,000 visits in January 2026. That’s an 85% drop. Seven of the outlets had at least a 50% loss in traffic, with CNET and PCMag sneaking under that at 47% and 41% traffic declines, respectively. Mashable fell the least, dropping 30% from 16.1 million organic visits in May 2024 to 11.3 million in January 2026.
It’s worth noting that all the figures pulled from Ahrefs are estimates and the decision to pull peak traffic months in 2024 instead of averages likely skews the figures. That said, the report lays out a compelling case that there has been a massive loss of organic traffic across tech journalism in just the past two years.
The report’s author writes that it can’t prove causation, but does speculate the roll out of Google’s AI Overviews is contributing to the decline. For one, most of the publications began to see their traffic fall off most sharply in the second half of 2025, which corresponds with the expansion of AI Overviews, particularly for “how to” explainers and gadget and gear guides. Publications like HowToGeek, Digital Trends, and ZNET undoubtedly have suffered from these queries turning up answers in Google without the need to click through.
The report also points to Reddit’s recent jump in Google search rankings for “best X” keyword searches as a possible factor. As well as the rise of generative search chatbots, like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity that are cutting into traditional search.
Overall, the report questions how sustainable “search-dependent revenue models” are for the digital tech sites in 2026.
No discussion of tech media can get past this basic traffic fact: in the AI world, Google and social no longer refer traffic, which means that the vast majority of readers just never find you in the first place. Analysis: https://t.co/zZW6PhxhZ2 pic.twitter.com/WgBUIDWoIF
— Danny Crichton (@DannyCrichton) March 3, 2026
more viscerally: these traffic declines represent directionally aligned revenue declines https://t.co/5LN09xavHT
— Alex Heath (@alexeheath) March 4, 2026
An absolute apocalypse ongoing in the Tech space; 58% of Google Traffic to the world's biggest tech sites has disappeared since 2024. The question is, will this phenomenon come full force for gaming sites, rather than just the echoes we've already experienced?
growtika.com/blog/tech-me…— Alex Donaldson (@apzonerunner.com) March 4, 2026 at 4:21 AM
Obvious but confirmed:
people now read less news, more AI summaries of news.
— Nick Tsergas (@nicktsergas.ca) March 3, 2026 at 8:57 PM